This is a guest post by Adriana Bankston, who participated in the pilot phase of this course along with fellow Future of Research board member, Calvin Ho. Training in research data management is critical for early career scientists. Proper data management is a responsible research practice that can facilitate collaboration and ensure that research outputs are properly generated, stored and made available for future use. In addition, it allows for discussions on measuring the scholarly influence and impact of such data, which is critical for the scientific training and career progression of early career scientists. Finally, this type of course is also valuable to organizations who rely on evidence-based resources to effect change in the scientific enterprise, including Future of Research (FoR). In fall 2017, Elaine Martin, DA and Julie Goldman, MLIS, from The Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School, led the pilot phase of the Best Practices for Biomedical Research Data Management Massive Open Online Course supported by the NIH Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Initiative for Resource Development. The pilot phase of the course consisted in nine online modules (approximately 20 hours of content) focused on specific components of data management best practices. Module topics included the research data lifecycle, metadata, data access, curation, long-term storage and preservation, as well as data ownership and related institutional policies. It also discussed open access and open data sharing, measuring the impact of research data, and the role of librarians in working with researchers to facilitate their data management needs. While specific aspects of the pilot phase of the course are...

Should we change science? What are the barriers to making change? Whose responsibility is it to change science and how do we engage all scientists and other stakeholders? Join us and the Union of Concerned Scientists for a Twitter chat on “Changing science”, as part of a broader discussion of changes you would like to see in science and what ideas & resources our organizations can provide for changes towards open science, outreach, advocacy, and public engagement. Follow #FORchangingscience on Tuesday, July 25, 2017 from 1-2 pm ET to participate in the discussion with @FORsymp and @SciNetUCS, and our guest participants: The EMCR Forum (@EMCRForum); The Center for Open Science (@OSFramework); The STEM Advocacy Group (@STEMadvocacy); Arturo Casadevall, (professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, @ACasadevall1); Andrew Hoffman (Holcim Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan, @HoffmanAndy); Emily Cloyd (AAAS Public Engagement, @EngageClimate) and Esther Ngumbi (postdoc at Auburn Ngumbi, @EstherNgumbi). This event is co-hosted by the UCS Science Network: http://www.ucsusa.org/sciencenetwork...

This is a guest post by Future of Research policy activist, Adriana Bankston. The AAAS meeting is a useful platform in which to discuss many important issues plaguing science today. Fundamental to the integrity of the scientific enterprise is being able to perform rigorous experiments at the bench, and successfully reproducing research findings. To this end, the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) has implemented Rigor and Reproducibility guidelines, which represent fundamental changes to the grant application and review process. These guidelines went into effect on January 25, 2016. A session at the 2017 AAAS meeting entitled “Rigor and Reproducibility One Year Later: How Has the Biomedical Community Responded?” explored the feedback received from both the NIH and the research community following these guidelines, and discussed how to best implement them to achieve both increased rates of reproducibility and dramatic returns on research funding investments. The session was moderated by Leonard Freedman from Global Biological Standards Institute (GBSI), a non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing the credibility, reproducibility, and translatability of biomedical research through best practices and standards. One of their initiatives, Reproducibility2020, aims to significantly improve the quality of preclinical biological research by the year 2020. The session featured Michael Lauer from the National Institutes of Health and William Kaelin from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as speakers, and Judith Kimble from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, also a member of the steering committee for Rescuing Biomedical Research, as the discussant. Michael Lauer on p-hacking and cognitive biases Michael Lauer began his talk by discussing the John Ioannidis paper from 2005 entitled “Why Most Published Research...